Los Lobos on the Wind, and Reaping the Rewards of a Garage Sale at the Garden Centre

If you stood on my deck about eleven o'clock on Friday night, you would have heard the band Los Lobos performing down the street in my neighbour's garage.

Well, that's what it sounded like. You could hear the song they were playing, but the sound was a bit muffled.

Actually Los Lobos were playing Clear Across Town at the Island Music Fest, but acoustics in my neighbourhood seem to spookily funnel the sound right down my street. I wonder how many streets in my town got a free concert this weekend.

Of course, every time a car went by, the quality of my listening experience went down, but I lay in bed with the patio door open and fell asleep listening.

So I was up late, and then up again early for my garage sale.

A few posts back (you may recall), my previous garage sale was rained out, but this one absolutely wasn't.

I was out there on my front drive hawking junk by quarter to seven in the morning... Oh,sure, my advert in the newspaper claimed I opened for business at nine, but I'm not willing to turn away people giving me money even if it's at an ungodly hour.

So, after a busy sale, I had some Guilt-Free Spending Money ear-marked for the garden and burning a hole in my pocket, and today Kim and her mom went to the garden centre with me to help me spend it.

I really REALLY wanted to buy oodles and oodles of plants, (I was all geared up to casually drop a hundred bucks or so), but (alas ) Kim's mom lately remembered that the back of her van was actually full already and I had to cut my spree short.

Nonetheless! I emerged with two large pots of gallardia (blanket flower), three pots of golden tickseed, and five containers of a campanula called Carpathian Bellflowers.

And I still have plenty of Garage Sale money left to spend.....

I spent a warm July evening out planting and watering my new additions to the garden.

On Friday evening (before the Los Lobos concert), I actually went to another (proper) concert with my mom. But before we went to see the Cantiamo choir sing, Mom took me on a tour of her own garden.

It's looking fabulous! It has a sort of Mediterranean theme going with lots of lavender and coreopsis and creative use of gravel. I thought I'd post some photos of it.

Ahem, also pictured is the fat black bunny that lives under the cedar tree in her front yard. Yes, my mom has a beautiful garden, but it is fraught with munching bunnies.

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Oh, I thought I'd post this picture too as I've just met this plant.

I saw it for the first time last weekend when I was wandering around Victoria with Tai, peering admiringly into people's front yards.

This is a tree poppy, and it's taller than I am. Absolutely magnificent.

I mention it particularly because I saw a much younger and less impressive version of it at the nursery today. I would've have gasped at the price tag of the specimen if I hadn't recently seen its potential.

No, wait, I still gasped....

Drat, but plants are expensive. (Either that, or people just want to give them to you for free. There is seemingly no middle ground.)